Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and girls, Children of allll ages welcome to my world of random adventures, bizarre cuisines, and huge mutha F@!*%n spiders!!!!
Ok so I am gona leave that spider thing out for last but let me tell you this, the think was frigging huge and freaky. Psychologically scared to the point I am writing this naked as I fear it had friends that may have attached itself hiding somewhere with in my clothes. I feel at this point my best self defense is to sit naked on a chair in the middle of my room so I can see all angles. You may think this is over kill but that bastard was huge and now that I know what surrounds me I will take no chances. Now if you don't mind stop picturing me naked and lets get on with the stories of my past 4 or 5 days.
So thanks to the hospital I was able to tour around central Taiwan this weekend with a group of other various interns and it was AWESOME!! Friday night I took it easy just going out for dinner with some family friends from here in Taiwan, they are taking me to there home towns this weekend where I will be the first whitey I am pretty stoked should be interesting. However meeting up with them seemed to be an impossible challenge that took about a hour and a half of walking around the largest subway station in Taipei, epic fail on the meeting spot!! But eventually all was good dinner was had and good times were followed.(thanks to a random stranger who helped me find them, however out of hundreds of people I pick the one person who has only been in Taipei for a few months? how the heck?)
Saturday morning we left the hospital on one of those huge tour buses at 7:30 am, wow that was early but they gave us a great traveling breakie of sugary foods and seafood sandwich's(seafood is almost as common as rice). I started watching a bit of baseball game and than soon passed out as it was way early for me, when I awoke I seemed to be in a paradise of heat, palm tree's, and heat! It was quite the transformation kind of like falling asleep in Edmonton and waking up in Tofino. It was unbelievable to see forests of Palm tree's all the way up the sides of mountains/hills. While watching in amazement we drove past a dried up river, all that was left was a valley or river rocks about 5 times the size of our river at least and bridges going over the rocks. Our first stop was an old town that I can not remember the name of right now but will find out later. This place was pretty sweet just old street of vendors, I actually call it city of dragon flies as I have never seen swarms of them before but here there was hundreds. From here we went to a old pottery making place that was built in the early 1920's. This was cool as they had a old fire kiln that was huge and we were able to walk through. There was a funny story about how the master forgot his head gear long time ago and came out with a perm and all the ladies started going in there when it was cool to curl there hair when no one was around haha. I also saw the largest piece of pottery in the world I know this all sounds kind of boring but I was massive and worth mentioning.
On the way to the long awaited sun moon lake we made another stop at a winery which was boring as it was morning and there was no taste testing, all I got was this damn shirt and by shirt I mean yam ice cream bar(and no not like our type of yams, not that it would make it better).
Ahhh finally sun moon lake, did I mention that it was in the 30's outside so it was super hot!! So we arrive and it was awesome! There was a boat there waiting to take us on a private cruise of the lake, we ended up docking on the other side and did a small hike to the top of a hill where there was a temple overlooking the lake and mountains this was a site that would could make a grown man cry...well not me of course but probably some other grown man.....We were constantly rushed tho as they planned alot for us to see so back to the boat we went and off to the next dock. This was just an old town with lots of random food vendors and stuff so we walked around looking at things like the store called 'bar and things' what a great idea get people drunk and then sell them things GENIOUS. So on the walk back we came across fermented eggs, these things were buried in the ground with different herbs and left to rot than sold to people like me, and I had to tye this courtesy of Amanada. As you recall I said in a previous post I will try anything while being out here as you only live once. I came across the world by myself so I am going to make the most of it! Well she told me to try a '100 year old egg' and I figure this is probably the closest If not the same thing. It looked so gross like a yellow clear jelly surrounding the yolk well down the hatch it went....unfortunately this was just the start of grossness on this trip. From here we went back to the hotel and a group of us went searching for beer. Oh did we find the place! a karaoke bar from hell and I think they wanted to steal me. We entered, saw, decided to leave and all the staff started to grab me and pull me in telling me to sit stay and drink I am so thankful for all my friends that did absolutely nothing!!!! However I did escape and we walked for at least a half hour trying to find a place and ended up back at a place next to the karaoke bar and guess what the owners were friends and ended up coming by and seeing us at this place....damn it......well after lots of beer Headed back to the amazing hotel and crashed out.
hmmm I think sunday was the day we went to the winery before heading up to the aboriginal village. Everything is just a big spin so I really have no idea what I did when in fact I am not even sure what day it is anymore, however I do know I have a hockey game to watch in the morning...GO FLAMES!!!
So on Sunday like mentioned I believe we went to the winery and than headed to a aboriginal village on top of a mountain that was actually just turned into a giant amusement park. We headed up via gondola which gave a great view of the surrounding area's. Once we got to the top we watched a show of tribal dancing and what not, it was interesting but all in Chinese so a lot of the time I stared and nodded when others did to look like I was not a strange foreigner that had no idea what was being said, however I think they could tell by the lack of pigment in my skin but whatev's I am pretty sure I nodded at the right time....Tho my laughs might have been misplaced slightly :)
(note to self a mock killing of a native with a spear is not a humerous situation)
The rest of the day was spent wondering the park taking rides looking at totem poles, you know the normal. They are terrified of H1N1 here and you have to sanitize your hands before most rides, yet they expect me to crap in a hole in the ground.......not likely.....oh my belly aches........
We headed back to town for dinner at this amazing buffet style restaurant with tons of gourmet foods, you really notice the Japanese influence with a lot of sushi's and miso soup! I ate and ate it was so good to have awesome food after the lack of good food around the hospital. Unfortunately at the end of the meal my friend came up to me and reminded me that I agreed to try everything and anything, than informed me there was chicken testicles at the bar.......yup.......well I traveled across the world by myself so whats a testicle or two to chomp down on right??? WRONG!!! so to no surprise it tasted like chicken but was squishy and gross, everyone was watching as I chewed yet couldn't swallow(go ahead insert crude elementary style joke here)I just couldn't do it so I grabbed a bottle of coke and jugged, well at least I did it! From here we went to an amazing 5 star hotel courtesy of the Taiwan Government. Took it easy this night.
Monday was the last day of the trip, we woke up and headed out to one of the newest ground breaking hospital/surgery training centers in the world. This was an amazing opportunity to see facilities that Surgeons from all over the world constantly apply and wait for to come and train here. I was able to get a tour of the training rooms as well as the o.R and it was unbelievable to see!!! We toured the rest of the 'hospitel' they call it this because it is more of a hotel than anything, even the nurses where hotel uniforms. The hospital rooms were better than any hotel/apartment I have ever been in you need to go check the pictures! I will not bore you with much of this stuff but believe you me it was cool. We boarded the bus after a day of seminars and tours and headed to the old street for a quick walk where I Bought 2 pairs of shoes and a leather wallet for 30 bux, good deal I must say. Back home we go.....
Drum roll please!!!
Now for the spider story and why I am sitting here naked, well not naked got shoes on for attack purposes just in case. So I decided to go and venture out to the hills and go on a hike by myself today...how hard to could it be....sounds like a great idea right? well I get to the start of the hike and its stairs ziggin and zaggin steep up this mountain hillside thing, so I start 1800 meters how bad can it be?? well about 100 meters in I see the scariest friggin spider of my life and it was huge here check it out for yourself http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3247/3076434695_982962807e.jpg did you look?? ya not cool!!!!!! So I keep going up this stair case up and up and up and up....I finally get to the top sweat dripping down my forehead, shirt soaked, breathing like darth vador during a asthma attack 'Luke where is my inhaler?' and what do I find at the top and old guy doing chin ups WTF who climbs a mountain to do chin ups at the top!!!!! well I am not sticking around here to join him hell I can't even breathe so I see path and take it. Well next thing I know I am on the pathway to hell its really just kinda carved out with potato sacks nailed into it for some sort of pathetic attempt at grip, at this point I am thinking if I fall no one will ever find me. I end up on some other trails totally lost in the forest and come across creepy huts and things that I can not really explain but there are pictures. I can hear things in the bushes which at this point I am imaging to be 5 ft tall spiders waiting for me to trip so they can entwine me with web and feed me to whatever other crazy animals are around here.....I am sure there just lizards, or birds yes there probably just birds, birds that follow lost tourists waiting to peck there knee caps off.... sorry I am getting a lil crazy but its late and I have been writing this for hours. I will end this now I finally came to the bottom I could here traffic I was saved!!! I came out on to a freeway which I followed back to the MRT looking back at my hike thinking damn that was fun trying to figure out where to go tomorrow......however my 'mountain' was really just a foresty hill and my journey was really only an hour and a half, But rest assured when you are in a unknown area with the sun setting on a hillside where you can't see civilization knowing there's spiders waiting to eat you, a hill seems like a mountain! Needless to say it was fun as hell and I am looking forward to my next adventure but maybe I will bring a friend. wow I am not looking forward to eventually re writing, editing, and adding other stories to all these posts as I remember them.
well here is my quote of the day "Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it, it's only good for wallowing in"
Much Love,
Chris
P.S I am not really naked as I write this but I am thinking I will stay awake until I return to Canada.....
P.S.S I forgot to mention my crouching tiger praying mantis!! yes I saw a real live praying mantis SO COOL! Made me think of kung fu panda haha
Ok a few other things for me to remember. Went to a paper making mill and watched how paper was made and made a fan...mine was really sucky but was still cool. Also took 3 days to find deodorant!!!! Went to an old train station and saw a lake filled with crazy koi fish flyin through the air as people fed them. Ok I am done now...GOODNIGHT
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